Classic favorite design & photos. Inside and out.
to a garden of dreams,
where worries vanish,
in a tulip trance,
while daffodils dance.
There are over seven million tulips,
in the Keukenhof gardens in The Netherlands.
A perfect place to dream your day away.
I am home for the winter at The Holler, but send you springtime cheers from Keukenhof~
The architecturally interesting Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, sits on a stunning property with views over the ocean cliffs.
(Note: Salk is buttoned up these days due to their COVID- 19 research. They are working on vaccine development, viral imaging and immunity studies. Guards are patrolling and visitors are not allowed. Thank you Salk for what you do).
Next to Salk is the Torrey Pines Glider Port.
A couple steps and you are off the cliff,
soaring,
with the birds,
helicopters and planes,
over the ocean,
far below.
Sailing off into the sky,
seems so freeing, except for the cliffs and rocks below!
Cheers to you from my life on the ground~
There is a ghost ranch adjacent to The Holler.
It’s in a nature preserve and is named Rancho Lilac.
Rancho Lilac has a interesting history.
It was originally settled as a 2300 acre homestead in 1865.
It passed through several owners over time who turned it into a working cattle ranch.
In 1945 it was purchased by Col. Irving Salomon, an undersecretary to The United Nations who built an extensive rancho home where he hosted rural retreats for world leaders like Dwight Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mahatma Ghandhi, and Golda Meir.
This is the Salomon home ranch complex . There is an abandoned pool and tennis court and a caretaker living on the property. The rancho is currently preserved as an historical landmark.
There is a year round creek running through the property making the habitat critical for wildlife sustenance.
1600 acres of the ranch property have been set aside as a permanent nature preserve.
This is the old road that connects The Holler to the Rancho.
The Rancho is like a time capsule, unique, pristine, and full of precious and vulnerable wild life. We hope it stays protected into the future.
Cheers to you & be careful and safe~
This Red Shouldered Hawk has been sparring in Holler skies recently with the Red Tailed Hawks.
“California Sister” butterflies are understandably at home in The Holler.
“Firecracker Skimmer” dragonflies float lazily by.
Passion flowers are passionately,
prolific.
Pickerelweed flowers,
reach for the sky. (Thank you Eliza Waters for identifying this plant!)
Bottle brush thrive while spiders spin.
Cheers to you from all who seek the sky~
Quiet beauty.
For difficult days.
Fragile.
Strong.
Like you,
and I.
Orchids grow,
in volcanic rock.
Beauty blooms from fire.
Cheers to you and keep on blooming~
The Oasis Inn in Death Valley National Park lives up to its name. But there is so much more in the area. Come on, let’s go explore….
Check out The Goldwell Open Air Museum, established by four Belgian artists in 1984, just outside the boundaries of the park.
The artists created large scale outdoor sculptures which, in combination with the desert landscape, result in a truly unique visual experience.
The feeling this evokes, like the desert itself, is eerie.
This is one of the artist abodes. Check the museum out at: http://goldwellmuseum.org/
After we explore the remarkable museum and it’s ghostly sculptures by ourselves for as long as we want (there is no one here to bother us), we mosey on down the road to Rhyolite, Nevada, a gold mining ghost town that boomed and busted between 1904 to 1920.
At it’s peak in 1908, Rhyolite had a population of 8,000. By 1920, when the gold had petered out, the population stood at 14.
The post office, the bank, the store, the school, all were abandoned.
Can you imagine living in a desert that reached the hottest temperature on earth with no AC?
One home, built in 1905, was constructed almost entirely of 50,000 beer bottles. It is one of the most well preserved buildings in the ghost town.
You can see the bottle details in this section of wall. You could sing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” in this house, and actually be counting! For more on this unusual home see : http://www.nbmog.org/bottlehouse.html
Cheers to you from the fun to explore and always mysterious Mojave ~
In the stark desert landscape,
The Inn at Death Valley
is an oasis
transforming the desert
into a tropical paradise
bursting with life.
Cheers to you from The Oasis at Death Valley~
Note: The Oasis Inn at Death Valley was built in 1927.
St Petersburg Russia
Strasbourg France
Santorini Greece
Melk Austria
Nuremberg Germany
Lisbon Portugal
Dubrovonik Croatia
Prague Czech Republic
Cinque Terra Italy
Budapest Hungary
And Merry Christmas to you, from me, at The Holler~
(Photos: C.Knoke)
The Mission Inn in Riverside California, built over a sixty year period beginning in 1876, is a living museum full of priceless art and antiquities. It has two onsite chapels, one is dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi and has glass works designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany in 1906 for a chapel in New York.
Many Della Robbia style ceramics from Italy,
are on stunning display throughout the property.
The Inn is a National Historic Landmark which you can tour on your own or with a docent. The art and artifacts overflow the spacious Inn and there is a museum with more art across the street that can also be toured.
Ten US presidents have visited The Inn,
and there is a presidential lounge dedicated to them.
The mission style interiors are comfortable and spacious, but the most amazing spaces for me are all the inner courtyards which are like beautiful outdoor rooms full of whimsical artwork and constant surprises.
Exploring is great fun as everywhere you look you find precious art and artifacts.
The clock tower has a glockenspiel with full size rotating figurines that is a replica of the original built in Nuremberg Germany in 1709.
The Inn has over 400 antique bells. One from Nanjing China dates from 1247 and is the oldest bell in Christendom.
Cheers to you from the fascinating and fun Mission Inn in Riverside California~
The historic Mission Inn which occupies several blocks in downtown Riverside California is the largest Mission Revival building in the United States.
The Inn was built in 1902 by an engineer named Christopher Columbus Miller. His son Frank expanded his father’s original efforts, and added wings, rotundas, chapels, museums and galleries.
The building contains a mixture of Spanish Gothic, Moorish and Mediterranean revival architectural styles. There is a Spanish Wing, an Alhambra Wing, and flights of fancy everywhere you look.
Frank Miller traveled the world collecting museum quality treasures to fill the inn, including what some say is the oldest bell in in the new world dating from 1247.
There are two chapels on the property including the one pictured dedicated to St Francis of Assisi.
Louis Tiffany designed two of the mosaics in the chapel.
The Rotunda Wing features a five story open air staircase.
The rotunda tops a suite dedicated to the writer Anne Rice.
Presidents, world leaders, and many famous folk have stayed in the inn over its history and the inn has a presidential lounge dedicated to the many presidents who have stayed here.
The Inn began a period of slow decline in the 1960’s where ownership changed hands multiple times and bankruptcies occurred, eventually forcing the city of Riverside to purchase and close the property for eight and a half years. In 1992, The Historic Mission Inn Corporation purchased the property and reopened it in all its former glory.
I will show you more details and the interiors of this amazing building in my next post. Until then, cheers to you from The Mission Inn in Riverside California~
